


painting the ground

by sulfuric



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Happy Ending, M/M, Mutual Pining, and some good ol' misunderstanding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 06:42:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5529773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sulfuric/pseuds/sulfuric
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>minho is waiting for someone to bring colour to his world. newt does, but not all of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	painting the ground

**Author's Note:**

> this is for the lovely [anna](http://likeyourfaverecords.tumblr.com/) as a part of her secret santa gift! merry christmas my dear <3

Minho is six years old and he knows how it works. Your eyes don’t see colour until you look at your soulmate for the first time. At least, that’s what his mom told him. He’s not entirely sure what  _ soulmate  _ means, but his older sister (who saw colours when she was only four, as she wouldn’t stop reminding Minho) says it’s a person who makes you smile. Minho doesn’t think that’s true at all - in fact, he thinks that makes her a big fat liar, because his dog makes him smile, and he can’t have a dog for a soulmate, right? 

But Minho doesn’t care because he’s six and he has better things to be doing than worrying about whether he’s supposed to marry his dog or not. 

 

(Newt is six years old and he sees a boy with restless fingers and floppy hair and bandaids on both knees. The sky turns blue but the grass is still grey.)

 

 

Minho is seven years old and he decides that the second grade is really dumb. His teacher is an absolute meanie head, but after two months of telling Minho to stop talking to his partner (‘cause they have desks in  _ partners _ , and Minho’s partner is weird but Minho needs  _ someone  _ to talk to), Mrs. Paige gives him a new partner and tells him to talk to the boy, to make him feel welcome in their classroom.

The new kid comes with a sharp tongue and an explosion of colour, and Minho smiles. 

 

(Newt is seven years old and the shirt on the boy with black hair - his  _ partner,  _ apparently - changes colour right in front of his eyes, and finally, he knows what the grass is supposed to look like.)

 

 

Minho is eight years old and Newt is his best friend in the whole world. 

 

(Newt is eight years old and he thinks he’s starting to understand what his mum said about colours.)

 

 

Minho is ten years old and he’s starting to realize that what he sees isn’t quite everything he’s supposed to see. His world is yellows and blues, things dull and drab when he knows (somewhere deep in him, he knows) brightness should make its home. Trees are wrong. The grass is wrong. His mom’s favourite lipstick is wrong. 

_ Minho  _ is wrong. He knows it, he knows something is definitely wrong with him. He should be able to see all the colours, but he can’t. He has no clue what it means (Is his soulmate dead? Did he only see half of them? Is his soulmate blind, is that why he can’t see all the colours?) 

He keeps his mouth shut.

 

(Newt is ten years old and red is his most favourite colour of them all.)

 

 

Minho is thirteen years old and he’s screwed. He knew his mom had been suspicious, but he hadn’t thought it was this bad. It’s a saturday morning and he’s sitting in the waiting room of an optometrist’s office. He feels bad - really bad, like acid churning holes through his stomach bad - for countless reasons. Besides her  _ knowing _ , knowing that her son is basically a half-colourblind freak of nature with no soulmate, there’s the money. The only reason Minho could’ve kept this a secret so long was that his family couldn’t afford to do yearly checks with the optometrist. But this, clearly, was a special circumstance. 

He blames the apples. Why would they make the same fruit two different colours, anyway? Don’t they all taste the same? Anyway, it was the apples. Minho’s mom asked him, ever so calmly, to bring her a green apple. He had a fifty-fifty chance, but he chose the wrong fifty that morning. 

So, there they are, at the optometrist, waiting for confirmation of what Minho already knows to be true. He knows he’ll have to fess up about only seeing some colours, that he’s a freak.

But the one who painted his sky blue? That, Minho could never tell. Would never tell. He resolves to keep his mouth shut tight, forever.

 

(Newt is thirteen years old and they ask him if he has a soulmate. It’s a short, bitter exhalation, a humorless laugh.  _ Yes. _ )

 

 

Minho is fourteen years old and he’s living in secrecy. After his diagnosis (partial completion syndrome; either he wasn’t his soulmate’s soulmate or he hadn’t met all of his soulmates yet, whatever  _ that _ meant) he and his mom decided not to tell anyone, not even his big sister. It was easier that way, and telling people that he just hadn’t met his soulmate yet was better than telling them he wasn’t good enough for the one he’d already found. 

Newt is Minho’s sun. He’s warmth, he’s home, and he’s  _ there _ . But he’s also incredibly painful to look at for too long. It’s like a constant paradox, being friends with Newt - Minho is so, so deeply in love with the blond boy that it feels like flying every second he’s with him, but then falling every time he remembers that he’ll never be enough for him.

Minho remembers much too often.

 

(Newt is fourteen years old and he hopes, god does he hope.)

 

 

Minho is fifteen years old and it’s eating him up inside, so he tells Newt. Not everything, of course, but enough. Newt exhales for a long time then pats Minho on the shoulder, telling him that soulmates are stupid anyway (hey, he’d seen in full colour for  _ years  _ and he still had no idea who his was) and that he didn’t need one to complete or whatever the bloody hell everyone thought soulmates did.  Minho smiles.

 

(Newt is fifteen years old and his heart shatters. He picks up the pieces and tucks them away, hoping to never have to see them again.)

 

 

Minho is sixteen years old and he fucking hates Christmas. Everything is red and green, obviously, he just can’t see it. Which is annoying, really, because everything is the colour of wheat  and he’s sick of it. He’s sick of being half colourblind, he’s sick of knowing that Newt will never love him back, and he’s fucking sick of fucking Christmas.

It not just the festive non-colours, either. It’s the sickening sentimentality of the whole thing, a constant reminder of everything he’d never have.

As if his sight wasn’t enough to keep him constantly aware of  _ that _ .

Anyway, it’s shitty and Minho hates it all. He sits in biology (directly across from Newt, the arrangement generating daily staring contests with ease) and stares at the snowflakes falling behind him instead. Minho thinks that if people were snowflakes, he’d be the meltwater sliding down into the sewers - ages past fallen and not a hope in the world of being the joy caught on someone’s tongue. 

 

(Newt is sixteen years old and he doesn’t understand a single thing.)

 

 

Minho is seventeen years old and everything changes.

It’s lunch and it’s him and Newt (it’s always him and Newt, always) and it’s a foreign face tripping into their world.

He brings colour with him, handing it to Minho’s eyes with a gaping mouth and darting eyes, back and forth between Minho and Newt. He stutters a quiet  _ holy shit _ and Minho gasps, because the guy’s lips are red and his shirt is green and he’s absolutely breathtaking.

 

(Newt is seventeen years old and he  _ remembers.  _ He remembers and every single thing makes sense.)

 

 

Minho is eighteen years old and  _finally,_ everything is the way it should be.

 


End file.
